2 Degrees Investing Initiative | Impact Washing Gets a Free Ride

An analysis of the draft EU Ecolabel criteria for financial products. The Draft Ecolabel focuses exclusively on environmental themed funds, which represent about 0.1% of today’s market. Based on the Draft Criteria, the Ecolabel eligible investment universe is composed of about 200 listed companies with environment-related activities, representing 1% of the global universe. Thus, the Ecolabel’s strategy appears to be to inflate this micro-niche artificially to a 10-20% market share by promoting environmental themed funds to the 60-70% of retail clients interested in the environmental impact of their investment products.